Mitchell Robinson of Michigan State University explains why he could not support for Cory Booker for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
He writes:
I really don’t want to be a single-issue voter, but education will almost always be the most important issue for me–and Booker is catastrophically wrong and bad on education. His corporate leanings and pro-pharma stance are just the gravy for me on Booker.
So, if you like for-profit charters, then Cory Booker is your guy.
If you want to privatize public education, then Cory Booker is your guy.
If you think that state tax dollars should go toward vouchers to pay for private and religious school tuition, then Cory Booker is your guy.
If you think that Betsy DeVos’ education policies are making schools work better for kids, families, and communities, then Cory Booker is your guy.
And if you think that scapegoating the “failing public schools” takes the heat off your candidate’s support of a corrupt Wall St., or the crushing costs of prescription drugs, or our nightmare of a health care system, then Cory Booker is your guy.
But if you think it’s about time for the Democratic Party to return to their historic support of public education, and teachers unions, and abandon their somewhat recent neo-liberal dalliance with charter schools, and school privatization, and the corporate reform of education agenda, then look for a candidate who isn’t a charter member of “Democrats for Education Reform” (spoiler alert: they aren’t Democrats, and they aren’t *for* education), and who doesn’t have more ties to Betsy DeVos than her yachts have non-US flags, and who was willing to work with Chris Christie to sell-out Newark’s schools to Mark Zuckerberg.
None of this this is new.
This article appeared in Education Week in 2013. Nothing has changed. Cory Booker is still a supporter of charters and vouchers, no different from Betsy DeVos except she’s a billionaire and he raises money from Wall Street billionaires.
Things Educators Need to Know About Cory Booker
Education Week By Alyson Klein October 29, 2013
New Jersey voters this month picked Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, to fill the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, also a Democrat, who died in June. Mr. Booker already has a national profile on education issues.
1. ‘Democrat for Education Reform’: Mr. Booker was a galvanizing force in the past decade bringing together a cadre of high-powered, deep-pocketed Wall Street donors with an interest in education policy, to support his early races for city council and mayor. The group eventually became Democrats for Education Reform, now the signature political action committee for left-of-center politicians who are fans of less-than-traditional Democratic policies, including charter schools and teacher performance pay. The group’s founders “knew each other before, but they got involved in politics together to support Cory Booker,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of dfer. The pac poured some quarter-million dollars into Mr. Booker’s Senate campaign, Mr. Williams estimated.
2. Voucher Supporter: Mr. Booker is among a handful of prominent Democrats nationally to support private school vouchers, and championed a proposed New Jersey law that would have created a voucher program in that state. He co-founded Excellent Education for Everyone, a nonprofit organization that sought to promote vouchers and charter schools in New Jersey. The push won backing from other well-known New Jersey Democrats but was ultimately unsuccessful.
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/10/30/10electionsenator.h33.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This from Bob Braun’s Ledger Facebook site: quote – NO,NO,NO,NO!–Cory Booker for president? Based on his record of what? Allowing his friend Chris Christie to strip Newark of police protection? Bringing in the school privatizers who concocted the One Newark plan to torture the neediest children who had to travel across the city? Handing over nearly one half of the school budget to money-sucking charter schools? Conspiring with Christie to manipulate the election laws that gave Booker his Senate seat–and cost NJ taxpayers $24 million? Maintaining close ties with the Wall Street neoliberals. The only worse president would be Donald Trump. This can’t be happening. end quote
I hope Booker doesn’t run but if he does run, here’s hoping that he will be out-voted by a more progressive Democrat. However, if it came down to Booker or Trump, no contest, I would vote for Booker. Two terms of Trump is just mind destroying, soul destroying.
https://www.facebook.com/bobbraunsledger/
Yep, I hope Booker goes down to defeat early in the primary and I’m “anyone but Booker”** in the Democratic primary because education is my primary issue.
But I agree that Booker is much better than Trump and I’d vote for him in the general if he was running against Trump.
**I would vote for Booker over Andrew Cuomo if there was a 2-man race in the primary but happy I don’t have to make that choice.
From the sounds of this, it sounds like Cory Booker is not my man.
I didn’t think he was, but this confirms it once and for all.
What are Mitchell Robinson and his colleagues doing to get the MSU Educational Policy Innovation Collaborative to disclose its funders to the public? The center’s two directors are faculty in the Education Department. Prof. Douglas Harris’ Tulane ERA center which is modeled along the same lines is funded by Arnold. And, the one at St. Louis University is funded by Walton heirs. Will it take a FOIA request to MSU to get the info. or, is EPIC, a private center like Mercatus at Koch-owned George Mason University?
I’m in the College of Music, not the College of Education, and am not involved with the group you’re referring to. That said, MSU is a public university, so that information should be readily available.
Readily available? Then, why won’t EPIC, the Dean of Education and the Provost disclose the original funder?
Next stop- Board of Trustees
Why isn’t MSU’s faculty senate asking for the information?
I googled “EPIC MSU” and found this: https://edwp.educ.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-launches-new-effort-to-support-informed-education-policy/
Hope that helps.
John Arnold!!!!!
MSU’s faculty senate should ask to see the contract to determine if strings are attached, e.g. hiring privileges for the donor.
The Koch contracts at various universities like Florida State have had strings attached that violate academic independence. See UnKochMyCampus.org
Rossier’s Dean was the first Pahara (Gates-funded) fellow to chair an education department at a university.
In September, Gates and Arnold sponsored a session at the Bipartisan Policy Center. The subject was the “changing landscape” in higher education. The single representative of a school on the panel list was the former Kaplan, now Purdue Global.
Purdue’s faculty are fighting back against the destruction of public universities which were created as quality alternatives to legacy admission schools.
I feel similarly. I will vote for him if he is the Democratic nominee, but in the primary I will definitely vote for someone else and urge others to do the same based on his poor education record.
THE ONION delivers in this parody of Cory Booker’s current and future comments attacking Wall Street and Bookers corporate backers. Booker lets them know that he doesn’t want any of them to take seriously any of of the populist, anti-Wall Street, anti-hedge fund, anti-etc, stuff he’s now saying, and which he will continue to blather disingenuously up to and until he’s in the White House.
No, Booker doesn’t and won’t really mean any of it, and will not act on an;y of it once he’s president. He’ll take care of Wall Street et al instead.
Don’t you see? It’s all and act on Booker’s part to trick middle class, working class, and minority voters into thinking Booker’s their guy, and getting them to vote fore him … when he’s actually Wall Street’s guy.
Here’s THE ONION:
(this needs to be re-tweeted, and repeated ad nauseous)
https://politics.theonion.com/cory-booker-apologizes-to-wall-street-bankers-for-the-m-1832268385
I just think there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Booker and any Republican on public education.
I think Booker knows this so he adds layer after layer of “progressive” language to ideas and plans that are identical to those of DeVos.
In a way I prefer DeVos- she’s ideologically opposed to the existence of public schools.
At least one knows where she stands.
Booker says he’s “pro teacher”. I can’t help but notice this is exactly the same positioning the Koch brothers have taken in their latest marketing push- they’re not anti-public school! They’re pro-teacher!
It’s like a mass email goes out to ed reformers and they all say the same things, at the same time 🙂
Some consultant looked at polling and focus groups and told ed reformers attacking teachers wasn’t a good look for the brand.
If people want to destroy public education and continue to pay outrageous prices for medicine, then supporting Cory Booker means exactly that. Labor union members, particularly teachers need to send a message to the DNC. Cory Booker has shown his cards, and he is far too divisive to run for president. Booker has been a much more active voice for public school privatization than “she who must not be named.” In addition, he has worked with DeVos, and her biased policies have caused a backlash against charter schools. The teacher strikes have helped to shift public opinion. The public is much more aware of the issues surrounding privatization, and support for charters is waning. I urge anyone that cares about the future of public education to either message the Democratic Party on Facebook or call the DNC directly at 202-863-8000, and let them know that, as an enemy of public education, Booker is not the best candidate. People are watching and want a candidate that supports public schools.
I would like ed reformers to address this, especially Democratic ed reformers who profess to be liberal or progressive:
“According to the report, total K-12 education funding declined by 30 percent between 2002 and 2015, with 74 percent of that drop caused by declining state support for schools.”
Why have you all done such a lousy job advocating for public school families?
How do we have hundreds of ed reform groups and thousands of full-time paid adults working on “education advocacy” and yet public school students lose year after year and after year when budgets are allocated?
How can you have a “public education movement” that does absolutely nothing for the schools 85% of kids attend?
We now have a President and a US Department of Education who deliberately EXCLUDE public schools in any education discussions or debate. Public schools have disappeared at the federal level. It’s like they don’t exist.
This is where ed reform has led us. They return no value to 85% of students and families.
Well said, Chiara!!!
DeVos now says she’ll be working on a federal voucher program for the remainder of her time in the appointment.
Is this acceptable in ed reform? A US Department of Education that is so completely captured they simply announce they have no intention of serving 85% of families or students?
There isn’t a public school kid or family in this country who would notice if ANY ed reformer simply stopped showing up for work. That should concern them, since that’s 85% of the kids and families in the country.
They are sometimes harmful to public schools and sometimes irrelevant to public schools but what they never seem to get around to is actually supporting or improving public schools.
We have a choice in the public school community- we can pick pols who are openly hostile to our schools or we can pick weak and ineffective “agnostics” who neglect our schools and are lousy advocates for our students.
We can do better than those two choices. We could hire people who actually value our kids and our schools.
Secretary DeVos has been an outspoken advocate of school choice for many years. She has announced that she is going to work for an expansion of school choice and school vouchers.
Stop the presses.
I haven’t seen a real pro-public education on the Democratic side yet.
I’m looking for a practical person – someone who actually intends to deliver for public school families. I am sick unto death of people who sound like they learned everything they know from a Ted talk.
Maybe Klobuchar has something real to offer. I’ll see.
That’s why I think the DNC should feel the heat of public opinion ASAP. Otherwise, they will march ahead in their corporate bubble and present Booker as their candidate.
It truly is scary to watch so many people who should KNOW better by now still being dazzled and bamboozled by the efforts of Democrats For Education Reform: a far- right effort under a left-leaning title. Booker is one of their poster children. http://dfer.org/
I keep telling the DEMS (esp. the DFERS) that they missed the boat when they turned their backs on public education for their own profits and those profits came to them in more than one way, too.
The DFERS are so wrong.
Booker is just a ‘yes’ man.
Not only will I never cast a vote for corporate sellout Cory I will no longer vote Democrat should they be so dismissive of their constituents’ political beliefs as to nominate such a disaster. These DFERs are Democrats???? Will the stranglehold on Congress by corporate lackeys ever be loosened?
and if the DFERs are allowed to be loved by the Democratic party as “Democrats,” what does that say about the nation actually having a party for the left
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
The reasons why no one should want Corey Booker to run for president in 2020. Booker is a corporate owned Democrat, a minion, a slave to the greedy money making machine that’s destroying the United States.
Booker could also be asked about the awful intersection between ed reformers and the promotion and protection of for-profit colleges.
“Howard Schultz, the billionaire former Starbucks CEO and possible independent presidential candidate, invested millions of dollars and personally owned stock in Capella University, a troubled for-profit college that overcharged the federal student loan program hundreds of thousands of dollars, records show.
Schultz, a co-founder of the venture capital group Maveron, invested in the Minnesota-based university in 2003 and exited when the online institution went public in 2006, according to an analysis of federal records, press releases and Maveron’s website.”
I’d like ed reform to explain this myself- Duncan and Schultz marketed these schools. The schools brutally ripped off millions of low and middle income students.
I will never forget one of the televised ed reform echo chamber events- Education Nation- the whole ed reform clique were seated in front of a giant banner promoting the University of Phoenix.
They love fads and cheap gimmicks. They love online education because they think they can get cheap training for low and middle income students. How is this “student centered?” Why do they offer us such low-quality garbage? Why do they fall for every huckster who crosses their path?
Education is a “business” that’s almost entirely personnel-driven in terms of budget–in our college, faculty salaries and benefits account for nearly 93% of our total yearly expenses. It’s pretty close to that in most schools. We just don’t spend all that much, relatively, on equipment, materials or even R&D in schools, so most of our expenses are in personnel. When you want/need to cut your costs or spending in a factory, you make less product or buy cheaper raw materials.
The only way to cut costs in education is to find a way to hire fewer teachers (i.e., “personalized” learning, larger class sizes, RTI, virtual charters, online classes and programs, etc.), or pay those teachers less (i.e., Teach for America, Teachers of Tomorrow, Relay Graduate School, hiring classroom facilitators for “credit recovery” programs rather than certified teachers, etc.)–neither of which helps kids learn better or is “good” for students, teachers, or schools.
So any time I hear an ed reformer start talking about their great ideas to “improve schools” or “reimagine education,” and the ideas above are part of the plan, I know their goals are financial, not educational. Which is always the case.
“We should also remember that private wealth over the generations has endowed our society with independent centers of power and thought that help protect our liberty.”
What nonsense. They created an expensively decorated echo chamber.
Booker sounds like Schultz who sounds like Duncan who sounds like every single person invited to Davos.
There’s no real debate in ed reform, unless we’re talking about technocratic discussions of how the vouchers should be managed. That’s not a debate. It’s bookkeeping.
Go look for an example of a single ed reform contradicting or questioning Bill Gates. You won’t find one. That’s because they’re all on the billionaire payroll. They don’;t have “supporters”- they have patrons.
Well said. The billionaires and CEOs represent a “nouveau aristocracy” in this country. The American people never voted on and should never accept this partiality to the interests and leadership of the wealthy. We believe in one voice, one vote in a democracy.
Corey Booker is the next Obama.
He’ll be much worse.
Eh?
M.R.: “If you think that Betsy DeVos’ education policies are making schools work better for kids, families, and communities, then Cory Booker is your guy.”
Booker was one of DeVos’s most severely critical opponents, voting against her…
“So, if you like for-profit charters, then Cory Booker is your guy.”
Is there any support for that contention? In NJ, an entity “shall not realize a net profit from its operation of a charter school.”
Alyson Klein’s allegation that Booker supports vouchers links to an article where he says: “I don’t think vouchers are the solution.”
Booker worked arduously to raise quite a lot of additional money for Newark schools, a large portion of which went to district school teachers… e.g,, as per The Prize: Union president Joe Del Grosso “said he was proud of the contract because it treated educators as professionals. He emphasized that it won teachers the right of peer review, to weigh in on colleagues’ evaluations–a critical protection, as he saw it, in an age of tightening accountability. But his strongest argument, to which he returned again and again, was that teachers would collect $31 million in back pay, courtesy of Zuckerberg. With New Jersey stuck in economic doldrums, Del Grosso said, more than one hundred other locals had been forced to settle for no back pay at all.”
How much of this kind of stuff do y’all actually disagree with:
https://votesmart.org/candidate/public-statements/76151/cory-booker/27/education#.XFscq1xKjcs
Is it, instead, just pp. 9-10 here that folks find upsetting?
Click to access Urban%20Charter%20School%20Study%20Report%20on%2041%20Regions.pdf
Booker supported vouchers in a speech to the Manhattan Institute.
“Booker supported vouchers in a speech to the Manhattan Institute.”
In 2000?
Haven’t had a chance to watch that. Even just a few years later he was pretty clear that he would not support a voucher program that subtracted funds from public schools to go instead to private schools…
Back in 2003, Elizabeth Warren supported a voucher program… but according to this article, at least, it would have supported mobility between public schools rather than support for private education… perhaps something with results similar to the widely-lauded METCO program in Massachusetts where city kids can attend suburban schools.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/01/26/elizabeth-warrens-quiet-support-for-public-school-vouchers
I presume that Booker, if elected, would fight to increase funding for district schools particularly in low-income areas, and also offer support for relatively high quality charter schools, together with some accountability measures, would provide vigorous support for pre-K, alleviating student debt burdens, crackdowns on for-profit colleges…
Google Booker and vouchers and you will get over 100,000 hits.
Here is one:
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Cory_Booker_Education.htm
“Google Booker and vouchers and you will get over 100,000 hits.”
Indeed
Here’s what I get:
booker voucher: 386,000 results
ravitch voucher: 73,800 results
ronan voucher: Did you mean: roman voucher?
I know your results reflect consistently anti- sentiment. Our views are closely aligned yet again.
The material re: Booker and vouchers seem to be focused pretty far in the past… Really don’t think he’d be a force in favor of those… especially not after a sit-down on the subject with Obama.
Can’t help but love this headline:
“Obama smacks Bill O’Reilly on school vouchers”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/05/obama-smacks-bill-oreilly-on-school-vouchers/?utm_term=.ad9645e9c280
If you open the links, you will see that article about me and vouchers express my opposition to them.
If you open links about Booker and vouchers, you will see that he has been closely associated with Betsy DeVos and a stalwart defender of vouchers.
Booker served on boards with DeVos. He visited Michigan in 2000 at her request to campaign for vouchers. He has been close to DeVos and her voucher campaign.
He voted against her for political convenience. He pretended to be appalled by her support for the same policies he advocated repeatedly.
“He pretended to be appalled by her support for the same policies he advocated repeatedly.”
Actually, Diane, his explanation of his opposition to her confirmation focused on concerns about what she’d do with the department’s Office of Civil Rights.
And if you haven’t yet, I would encourage you to look through this material to see the depth and breadth of his continuing disagreements with the department’s policies, and his exhortations for DeVos to improve its practices:
https://votesmart.org/candidate/public-statements/76151/cory-booker/27/education#.XFscq1xKjcs
I am so glad to learn that Cory Booker is concerned that DeVos would make a wreckage of civil rights enforcement.
That concern was not evident when he agreed to be keynote speaker for her pro-voucher organization.
I would like to hear him say out loud “I do not support vouchers.”
Unfortunately, he has many years of supporting vouchers that he has to disown.
It’s Cory, not Corey. And he’s a tool either way.
The Black Caucus phone number is 202-225-7084. The group will make a decision between endorsement of Cory Booker or Kamala Harris.
Since the NAACP, ACLU, SPLC and BLM have come out in support of public schools, the Black Caucus should recognize Booker is the billionaires’ minion.
The teacher unions need to make a statement if they haven’t already.
AFT made one statement when the organization became the 2nd largest campaign contributor to Calf. Rep. Susan Davis, a charter and privatization-lover.
Linda, if you are in California, let the AFT local know about Davis. National takes their recommendation.
Thanks. I’ll contact the California Federation of Teachers. Observation- AFT should review state recommendations when the AFT’s name is the only one attached to the contribution.
If Justice Democrats (AOC) feel compelled to target specific candidates to primary like Hakeem Jeffries because he supports charter schools, why hasn’t Randi done the same? Is she too close to CAP, a Gates-funded organization of DINO’s? Speculating, Puerto Rican public education would be better off without CAP’s self-appointment to deliver disaster capitalism to the island.
Well said!